“Let everyone in the inclusive government and in the country generally know that our nation will never prosper through foreign handouts,” Mugabe said at the funeral service of late Joseph Msika’s funeral. “Let us be clear, great enduring nations are built on their own endowments and efforts.” Wise words, indeed! Sadly he then launched into his usual anti-West rhetoric and shadow boxing.
Assuming Mugabe heeded his on words that Zimbabwe would not prosper through handout but through its own effort. When Mugabe has to accept that when he took over the running of the country in 1980 Zimbabwe was doing well. The country was growing enough food to feed all our own people and had surplus for export, for example. Today Zimbabwe’s economy is in total ruin; PM Tsvangirai went out begging for money to rebuild the national economy. Ironically, begging from the same the same Western countries he is so fearful of.
Mugabe’s chaotic and violent seizure of white-owned farms has destroyed the nation’s once thriving agricultural sector. Today, 80% of our people now depend on foreign food aid to survive – not to prosper, to survive! The farm seizures were supposedly to benefit the country’s landless peasants; in practice it was the ruling elite who benefited. And they have completely failed to make productive use of the farms, even after receiving millions of dollars in government subsidies.
An essential plank of Zimbabwe’s food and economic recovery has to be increased agricultural productivity. The seized farms must be given to those who will put them to productive use. Mugabe has vowed the ruling elite are to keep the farms. “Should it (the seized land) ever slip through our reckless fingers, let him rise to torment us and this nation,” said Mugabe; evoking the spirit of the late Joseph Msika.
The real heroes and heroines of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle die or alive must in fact be disappointed that Mugabe and Zanu PF have betrayed the noble cause of freedom, justice and economic prosperity for Zimbabweans to pursue selfish individual interest. As a senior member of the ruling elite, Joseph Msika benefited from the corruption and the ruthless repression. If Msika had any conscience at all, then he must have been ashamed that hundreds of thousands of innocent Zimbabweans have lost their lives during his watch!
Mugabe has enjoyed absolute power and he was abused it beyond belief. He has completely destroyed Zimbabwe’s agriculture for his own selfish gain – the nation was completely powerless to stop him – and he is even claiming the looting was a patriotic act!
Lord Acton said “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In Mugabe, we have the graphic example what it really meanings to have a leader who has been absolutely corrupted by power! Zimbabweans now know exactly what that means in terms of the unnecessary and tragic human suffering and lost human lives. And, more potently, they have now realised the only way to end their tragic sufferings and deaths is by taking away the absolute power from Mugabe. The million dollar question is ‘How to take away the absolute power from the dictator, Mugabe?’ It is the equivalent of the mice putting the bell round cat’s neck.
After the sham 27 June presidential run-off election the whole international community would not accept Mugabe as the dually elected president of Zimbabwe. He needed MDC to join him to form a Government of National Unity. MDC demanded meaningful power sharing and Mugabe did not concede to any of their demands. Even if Mugabe had conceded there was always the danger that he would go back on his word. After all he is a dictator; no one in their right mind would expect him to behave honourably.
Tsvangirai and MDC pinned their hopes on Mugabe giving up his absolute powers, powers he had stubbornly refused to give up under pressure, out of the generosity of his heart or that they would systematically and serendipitously take these powers away from him in time. One has to be really naïve to even think such a stupid plan would work, particularly given it was Tsvangirai – a naïve and timid dove - trying to pull a fast one on Mugabe – a cunning and ruthless fox.
It had taken a lot of courage and determination for Zimbabweans to vote to end Mugabe’s tyrannical rule in the March 2008 elections, knowing the violence and murder Mugabe could dish out to them in retribution. If the people had retained the head of steam, there is a real chance that there would have been meaningful change in Zimbabwe by now. Unfortunately the nation has let out the steam because they believed Tsvangirai that the GNU will bring about the democratic change they want.
After six months, the GNU has achieved nothing. On the political front Mugabe has continued to act in his repressive ways – to retain his iron grip on power. He has also resisted pressure to take away the looted land and other wealth from the ruling elite and to tackle corruption – that too would undermine his said iron grip on power. The GNU is in fact nothing more than the old Mugabe dictatorship whitewashed by the appointment of enfeebled MDC leaders in some ministerial positions.
Many Zimbabweans already realise this GNU will achieve nothing. But having let out their head of steam, there is little they can do now to once again take away Mugabe’s absolute power. They have effectively resigned themselves to whatever Tsvangirai’s hare brain scheme brings!
The tragic human sufferings and deaths will continue and pick up pace. The people will soon realise that having shops full of food and other goods is a good thing but, without the money to buy them with, it is simply not good enough. The suffering will push the people to once again build a head of steam and to demand change.
Tsvangirai’s policy of appeasing the dictator and hope against hope that he will freely give up his dictatorial powers will not work. The people will have to back to the proven method of demanding and taking away the power from him!
“Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation,” said Frederick Douglass, “are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”
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